This invention relates to a foldable box beam truss structure and a circular building fabricated therewith having no side wall that can be quickly and easily assembled from premanufactured wooden truss components. More particularly, this invention relates to a spherical building structure that can be completely prefabricated off-site, trucked to the site and assembled to quickly and economically enclose a circular area in a minimum of time.
In my prior U.S. Pat. No. 4,862,653 and in my co-pending application, Ser. No. 07/678,446, I have disclosed circular buildings of this general type. In the cited patent, I have disclosed a combination side wall roof truss arrangement for constructing a circular building and in the referenced co-pending application, I have shown a roof truss arrangement for providing a building structure having a minimum side wall in either the rectangular or circular configuration. These structures have proven very satisfactory for many applications, however, where it is desired to provide a truly spherical building structure, the truss and building construction disclosed herein has been found to be particularly well suited for such a purpose.